While
reintroducing Yoweri Kaguta Museveni as the NRM’s 2021 elections
top-ticket-bearer, on July 28, 2020, Dr Tanga Odoi, the party’s
electoral commission chairman, alleged that their candidate is 75 years
of age. I stand to strongly disagree.
Although,
Museveni’s age has always been the mysteriously unsolved puzzle, it is
easier to nail it down using the available information - about his
baptism, the age he started school and even his current looks (quite
usual for a well-kempt individual).
In his book, Sowing
the Mustard Seed, Museveni gives several details that are very helpful.
Whereas he writes that he was barely three years old at the time of his
baptism, normally, it is quite unusual for children to exhibit such
memory of the detailed account of events which happened at that age.
However, he provides very significant details.
First,
that in the same year of Museveni’s baptism (1947), his parents also
‘abandoned their pagan faith and became Christians’. Therefore, since
Museveni was born to parents who had not yet professed the Christian
faith, they could not have been married in church.
He
was Ekinyandaro (Runyankore) or Omwana w’Ekibi (Luganda) – that is
exactly how the Native Anglican Church (NAC) regarded children born
outside wedlock. Second, since his birth was not a product of a holy
matrimony, he could not by any means, be received for infant baptism.
Until
1968, the canons of the NAC (which was eventually surnamed Church of
Uganda in 1965), barred the baptism of children born outside Holy
Matrimony. This canon was strictly observed, and priests would be
defrocked for disobeying the canonical dictum.
Children born out of wedlock had to wait until a later age when
they would be old enough to undergo the mandatory two-year’ Catechumen
(Catechism) training offered by the lay-readers (Babulizi). Thereafter,
they would be orally examined by the local parish priest before they
were eventually allowed to be baptised.
Unlike today,
this process was strictly observed and the ill-prepared students, who
failed the parish-priest’s oral examination, would be dropped out of the
process, and their baptism delayed until a later date, whenever they
proved proficient enough. During the baptism service, all adults
(younger and older), were required to outwardly profess their faith
before being eventually baptised. Once again, those who were not ready
could be dropped out, even at that late hour.
As an
incentive for parents to send their children to school, [where they also
learnt religion (Ediini)], the NAC required that the young adults
acquire the ability to read and write before they were presented and
accepted for baptism. The baptism candidates underwent an arduous
preparatory process during which they read out the words of the
catechism to the lay-reader, and later on, to the examining parish
priest.
The age for attaining such proficiency before
adult baptism could not by any means be any younger than eight years, in
most cases, it was 10 years of age. The former was common for children
from urban settings while the latter was common for children from rural
areas.
In one of the very first presidential addresses,
regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, (available on Youtube), Museveni gave
another relevant detail when he revealed that he started school when he
was eight years old. That detail was so amazing to me, although it led
me into the temptation of assuming foul-play. I couldn’t understand how
somebody who knew his age when he started school, could not tell his age
– after he became President in 1986.
Could it be that
Museveni has always been aware of his exact age, but chose to keep it a
secret thereby flouting Ugandans into suspense as a means of
perpetuating his presidency?
If, Museveni started
school in January of that year when he was eight years old, later in
September of the same year, he turned nine. Similarly in September of
his second grade year he turned 10. To this day, most children from the
rural schools become proficient readers towards the end of second grade.
These
details only stand to affirm that Museveni must have been introduced
for baptism when he was around 10 years old – an age appropriate for
having such a vivid memory of the event – the way he does.
Putting
one and one together, it is, therefore, obvious that the man who was
probably baptised when he was 10 years old, and later celebrated his
70th baptism anniversary in 2017, plus the three years since that
celebration, will be turning 83 years old, come September 2020.
Rev John Ssebalugga Kalimi is an Anglican priest, a Church historian and student of Canon Law.
jkalimi@svacc.org
